on the verge of an eating disorder (Anonymous)

onTuesday, June 17, 2008

I had my baby when i was 16 years old.Iam 18 now. I weighed 125 to 130 pounds at the end of my pregnacy i weighed 204 pounds. I only lost 10 pounds after my baby’s birth. I am so ashamed of my body i feel like my husband has lost total interest in me. I feel like if i got down to being skinny and sexy again i will be happy. I cant even go out in public with out thinking people are starring at me for being so fat. I have had a histoy with eating disorders since i was 13 years old. I am tring so hard to be healthy and lose weight. I cant seem to lose any weight ever. Than i have to see celberity’s looking so dam good it makes me feel like crap.

I am sure that with some support, you can lose the weight. In your picture, you really look pretty good. Try to be positive about what you can do. Take small steps, perhaps with the help of your doctor or a nutritionist, to incorporate the right balance of foods and exercise into your life. It helps so much to have someone on your side to give you support and encouragement.

Sweetie, please don’t abuse your body with an eating disorder. Most of the time that just causes other problems like rotting teeth or osteoporosis. Losing weight sometimes takes a while. Exercising daily and eating a low fat, low calorie diet is your best bet, not starving yourself. Also, eat breakfast daily… usually six small meals does the trick better than three larger ones… starving yourself or skipping meals makes your body retain calories because it goes into starvation mode. Take care of yourself for your baby and for yourself. You are very beautiful. Beauty is more than skin deep. People will see your glittering smile and wonderful personality before they ever judge your body, that is if you let them see your wonderful personality first. Let that be what they see first. We all have more to offer than our bodies.

Your story touched my heart. Please try not to worry about what other people think of you most people are too busy wondering what others are thinking about them or how many loads of laundry they have to so to critsize others. I agree with sarah celebrities are false idols…. we could all be a size zero if we had personal cooks and trainers and nannies allowing us endless amounts of time to exercise and obssess about our looks….
Your beauty truly comes from within you and the more you embrace this the more it shines out of you. Try focusing on one positive thing a day when negative thoughts come -like your smile or another favourite peice of you. And try to remember compliments (however small) and repeat them to yourself over and over. Maybe you could talk to your husband about how you feel?? Sometimes they feel left out when the babies arrive.
thinking of you today.

I’m sure you feel bad right now and are feeling desperate. But, as someone who has struggled with an eating disorder for more than a decade, *please* believe me when I tell you that it is a soul-wrecking waste of your life. And it won’t even be effective in the long run.

Like other addictive coping behaviors (such as drugs and alcohol), you have to either give it up eventually or you will die. And when you give it up – start eating properly again or stop vomiting, for example – you will probably go back to being the exact same weight you were before you started all of this madness. In the mean time you will have hurt the people you love and made yourself miserable.

A lot of heartache has taught me that there is no secret to getting to a healthy weight permanently – only eating moderately, exercising regularly and having support through hard times will do it. Good luck! You can do it!

Hey. It can be really hard, especially for someone so young as yourself who’s suffered an eating disorder, to see that there’s nothing at all wrong with you and everything right. Your body has done what it was supposed to do – it has done what alot of other women’s bodies can’t do : it’s produced life.

My advice to you as an older person (33), who also suffered eating disorders from the age of 14 (and whose body has changed through pregnancy), is to try and take the focus off yourself and put your focus and energies into helping and loving others. You’ll see that after doing this for a while that you start to love yourself for who you are and what you do rather than what you think you should look like.

Pour the energy you’re spending hating yourself into caring for your little baby for example. The rewards will be extraordinary for you both.

It’s a conscious choice you have to make – and you have to be strong in mind and conviction – but you can do it. God bless you and keep you.

When I was pregnant, I put on alot of weight too. 70 pounds. It is normal. As far as losing the weight, I had a long road ahead of me. I wasnt even a good weight when I got pregnant. I joined an all womens gym which lifted my spirits everytime I went. Also, I did weight watchers. The emotional support from both were AMAZING! Also, I lost weight! I went from a size 10 pre pregnancy to a size 4 now 2 kids later. If you decide to try those I promise you will learn to love yourself! Good luck and God Bless.

My heart breaks for the way you are feeling because I was there. Please believe me as a woman who had an eating disorder: it SEEMS like it is worth the sacrifice to get skinny, but that’s the lie of the addiction. I didn’t even lose weight (I was a little chubby), despite my best efforts, but I did end up in ICU as the only 20 year old cardiac patient in the hospital because I abused my body. It took time in that hospital bed and a heart surgery for me to realize that what was so much more important than what the scale said was making sure that I didn’t destroy myself. Ironically, when I got home and focused on healing my body, not getting into a size 4, I trimmed down. I admit, sometimes it is still a struggle, but I remind myself of this: I only have one body and if I kill it, it doesn’t matter how skinny it was. Also, I have a son and a baby on the way and I have no right to rob them of a healthy mom.
You will be in my prayers- I know you can do it.

I cried when I read your post because I know exactly how you feel. I have struggled with eating disorders my whole life. and pregnancy has thrown such a wrench in the works that I lock myself up in the house all day. I can’t even get out to see people because I’m worried what they’ll think about me. Hang in there hun. You aren’t alone :(